Relyea, Lane. “Photography’s Everyday Life and the Ends of Abstraction”. Wolfgang Tillmans. New Haven: Yale University. 2006. Ed. Amy Texchner and Kamilah Foreman.
Something that attracts me to Wolfgang Tillmans’s practice is the predominance of its scattershot (Michael Wilson http://tillmans.co.uk/images/stories/pdf/2010_Artforum.pdf) rationality. In Lane Realyea’s essay Photography’s Everyday Life and the Ends of Abstraction a particular aspect of this, which involves a deliberate relinquishing of authorship by the artist is discussed. Comparing Tillmans to Morris Louis in this approach to materials, Relyea asserts that
“There is a very non-elitist political ideal here, barely glimpsed, that a batch of supplies already possess their own vast potentials for creativity and beauty; and that genius, rather than a divine gift innate to those lucky enough to emerge from the womb as artists, instead wells up in this – in the historical, material, public gathering place of an art medium, a set of materials and techniques and their varied past precedents hypothetically available to all.” (Relyea, Lane. “Photography’s Everyday Life and the Ends of Abstraction”. Wolfgang Tillmans. New Haven: Yale University. 2006. Ed. Amy Teschner and Kamilah Foreman. P 98).
I think what emerges within this objective regard for materials, using found objects, and almost considering one’s own work and processes as such, is an open response to the world as one that is more a dynamic part of it than an elevated individual.
I found the way Paul Elliman’s text complimented Kate Newby’s current Hopkinson Cundy exhibition to be transgressive in a way that similarly opens up viewer’s relationships to objects with less importance placed on the artists’ determination. Upon first reading
“Leave the gallery at any time but don't miss the works on the way out and elsewhere. MetService couldn't promise there wouldn't be rain this month so puddle sites will be refreshed every few days or so, stones have been placed and left to glaciate along the curb side. Curtains, often hung in windows above ground floor and throughout the city, will be opened at dawn and drawn again each evening, with a few translucents screening sunrise and sunset, again depending on the weather.” (http://www.hopkinsoncundy.com/exhibitions/Ill-follow-you-down-the-road/press-release/)
in the context of a press release, it seemed a viable expectation to have, knowing Newby’s practice, that modified stones might be exhibited outside the gallery interior. Something involving puddles being topped up seemed to tie in with a certain image of the rising and falling of the tide of the Aare she threw painted rocks into in Berlin. I assumed that the curtains were things around the city that she may have arranged with neighbours of the gallery to facilitate. It was only when actually physically going to the exhibition that I had the thought to search out the neighbouring curtains, that it occurred to me that since there are already curtains around the city that would perform exactly the activity promised in the text, that the pointing out of those things (like an immaterial photograph) was what the work undertook. (I might have picked this up from the way the poetry extended to nightfall, but I like that I didn’t and the way it dawned in a moment that stymied a previous stream of expectation.) Here I recognise that there are playful ways in which the creative gesture can respond to the world in ways that situate the subject in a perhaps more apprehensive position.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Materiality as Dynamic Exchange
Bolt, Barbara. “Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the Plane of Composition”. Deleuze and Contemporary Art. 2010
In her essay ‘Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the plane of composition’, Barbara Bolt uses Deleuze and Guattari’s materialism to elevate painting as a medium. She begins her discussion of their ideas by establishing a ‘common sense or pre-existing concept of composition’ as referring to ‘the relation between form and content.’ (Bolt, Barbara. “Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the Plane of Composition”. Deleuze and Contemporary Art. 2010. P 268) She goes on to specify that
“Content is concerned with the ‘subject matter, story or information that the
artwork seeks to communicate to the viewer’, whilst form is the result of the manipulation of the various (visual) elements and principles of design. In other words, ‘content is what artists want to say’ and ‘form is how they say it’ (Lauer and Pentak 1990:2).” (Ibid. P 268)
While Bolt claims that this is not what D & G refer to when they speak of composition, the fact that she mentions it at all establishes the idea of meaning as something already at a point of stasis from the outset. I believe Bolt misses the move away from ‘identity-thinking’ that is inherent in D& Gs’ materialism.
In Art Encounters: Deleuze and Guattari – Thought Beyond Representation Simon O’Sullivan attempts to account for their concept of materialism by talking about aesthetics, in an operational sense. This is a question of what changes are caused to the contingencies that culminate in a subject, when it is confronted by the sensatory means through which art registers. O’Sullivan quotes another writer on D & G to explain this exchange process a little in terms of material register.
“Massumi gives us the example of the carpenter, and his or her skills, competences and tools, ‘meeting’ a piece of wood, itself already the contraction of a past and of future potentialities. We might think of the artist’s ‘meeting’ with his or her materials, a more complex encounter perhaps, but of the same fundamental nature. This is a confrontation between a specific artist-subjectivity and specific materials, each of which themselves are already the envelopment of a potential.” (O’Sullivan, Simon. Art Encounters: Deleuze and Guattari – Thought Beyond Representation. Palgrave MacMillan: United Kingdom. 2006. P 21)
Although Bolt’s claim (which has no citation) that D & G are ‘quite adamant that the work of art is never produced by or for the sake of technique.’ (Bolt, Barbara. “Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the Plane of Composition”. Deleuze and Contemporary Art. 2010. P 268) is right in a sense that art is not reducible to the technique of the artist, I would still say that in considering the event of art, that ‘form as content’ is a relevant way to think about work, when conceiving of it as a maker.
In her essay ‘Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the plane of composition’, Barbara Bolt uses Deleuze and Guattari’s materialism to elevate painting as a medium. She begins her discussion of their ideas by establishing a ‘common sense or pre-existing concept of composition’ as referring to ‘the relation between form and content.’ (Bolt, Barbara. “Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the Plane of Composition”. Deleuze and Contemporary Art. 2010. P 268) She goes on to specify that
“Content is concerned with the ‘subject matter, story or information that the
artwork seeks to communicate to the viewer’, whilst form is the result of the manipulation of the various (visual) elements and principles of design. In other words, ‘content is what artists want to say’ and ‘form is how they say it’ (Lauer and Pentak 1990:2).” (Ibid. P 268)
While Bolt claims that this is not what D & G refer to when they speak of composition, the fact that she mentions it at all establishes the idea of meaning as something already at a point of stasis from the outset. I believe Bolt misses the move away from ‘identity-thinking’ that is inherent in D& Gs’ materialism.
In Art Encounters: Deleuze and Guattari – Thought Beyond Representation Simon O’Sullivan attempts to account for their concept of materialism by talking about aesthetics, in an operational sense. This is a question of what changes are caused to the contingencies that culminate in a subject, when it is confronted by the sensatory means through which art registers. O’Sullivan quotes another writer on D & G to explain this exchange process a little in terms of material register.
“Massumi gives us the example of the carpenter, and his or her skills, competences and tools, ‘meeting’ a piece of wood, itself already the contraction of a past and of future potentialities. We might think of the artist’s ‘meeting’ with his or her materials, a more complex encounter perhaps, but of the same fundamental nature. This is a confrontation between a specific artist-subjectivity and specific materials, each of which themselves are already the envelopment of a potential.” (O’Sullivan, Simon. Art Encounters: Deleuze and Guattari – Thought Beyond Representation. Palgrave MacMillan: United Kingdom. 2006. P 21)
Although Bolt’s claim (which has no citation) that D & G are ‘quite adamant that the work of art is never produced by or for the sake of technique.’ (Bolt, Barbara. “Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the Plane of Composition”. Deleuze and Contemporary Art. 2010. P 268) is right in a sense that art is not reducible to the technique of the artist, I would still say that in considering the event of art, that ‘form as content’ is a relevant way to think about work, when conceiving of it as a maker.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Translation and Empathy
In Bruno Latour’s exploration of what role network-thinking can play in reconciling the crisis western technological ‘advance’ has found itself in, regarding its relationship to the natural world, he uses an image filled with polemics of other-ness, to allude to how a sense of unity in the world is missed by the de-humanizing style of apprehension that characterizes modernist academia; that is, to isolate sects of knowledge.
“The tiny networks we have unfolded are torn apart like the Kurds by the Iranians, the Iraqis and the Turks; once night has fallen, they slip across borders to get married, and they dream of a common homeland that would be carved out of the three countries which have divided them up.” (P 6-7)
The metaphor is provocative of empathy and sorrow for a human fugitive body that is not granted status and whose image-base is not recognised anywhere within the physical territory available for it to occupy. It points to ostrasization and injustice caused by man-made divisions of identity. It implores, as Latour does, to discover alternatives modes towards knowledge and power distribution.
Latour is suggesting more ‘translativity’, which is a fecund proposition. But in departure from Latour here, I would like to address another mode of knowledge/response, which is also bought to my attention by the image he puts forward. Rightly or wrongly, the personified image of a people also evokes a sentiment toward a fugitive impulse in image making; the compulsion to materialise something between an articulation and an utterance without prior knowledge of the legitimacy of the gesture.
Bergson advocates intuition as a means to understanding, in opposition to Latour’s call for ‘more translativity’ (P ref) “Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known, that is, to elements common both to it and other objects. To analyze, therefore is to express a thing as a function of something other than itself. All analysis is thus a translation, a development into symbols, a representation taken from successive points of view from which we note as many resemblances as possible between the new object which we are studying and the others which we believe we know already.” (Bergson, Henri. An Introduction to Metaphysics. )
“The tiny networks we have unfolded are torn apart like the Kurds by the Iranians, the Iraqis and the Turks; once night has fallen, they slip across borders to get married, and they dream of a common homeland that would be carved out of the three countries which have divided them up.” (P 6-7)
The metaphor is provocative of empathy and sorrow for a human fugitive body that is not granted status and whose image-base is not recognised anywhere within the physical territory available for it to occupy. It points to ostrasization and injustice caused by man-made divisions of identity. It implores, as Latour does, to discover alternatives modes towards knowledge and power distribution.
Latour is suggesting more ‘translativity’, which is a fecund proposition. But in departure from Latour here, I would like to address another mode of knowledge/response, which is also bought to my attention by the image he puts forward. Rightly or wrongly, the personified image of a people also evokes a sentiment toward a fugitive impulse in image making; the compulsion to materialise something between an articulation and an utterance without prior knowledge of the legitimacy of the gesture.
Bergson advocates intuition as a means to understanding, in opposition to Latour’s call for ‘more translativity’ (P ref) “Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known, that is, to elements common both to it and other objects. To analyze, therefore is to express a thing as a function of something other than itself. All analysis is thus a translation, a development into symbols, a representation taken from successive points of view from which we note as many resemblances as possible between the new object which we are studying and the others which we believe we know already.” (Bergson, Henri. An Introduction to Metaphysics. )
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The possibility for Autonomy?
E-flux journal 16 – may 2010 Diedrich Diederichsen Audio Poverty
In discussing a notion of utopia as embodied within a creative moment that is free from systems of exchange, Diedrich Diederichsen addresses an assumption about ‘nature’ that has been confused with a sense of autonomy. An instance that springs to mind is that of abstract expressionist painting. Despite expressing a scepticism that arises against practices that claim to operate within ‘original states’ (and without explicitly differentiating) Diederichsen none-the-less suggests that music might offer access to a state of utopian autonomy,
“such a utopia of music possesses a radicalism that the other ideal functions of the arts do not. While other arts formulate maximums or optimums, it is always in relation to emerging or established social rules, and not as the suspension of those rules – which would be genuinely utopian.”
Hal Foster’s 1983 essay ‘The Expressive Fallacy’ uses a structuralist framework to argue for the impossibility of generating form outside of inherited cultural codes. He identifies an established account of expressionist gesture “we commonly say that an expressionist like Kandinsky “broke through” representation, when in fact he replaced (or superimposed) one form with another.” (Foster, Hal “The Expressive Fallacy” Recodings. Bay Press: Washington. 1985 P60. –Essay first published in Art in America. January 1983)
And returns to an analysis of how the forms in the work signify their autonomy from conventional representational convention to point out the irony of its status as such “Both types of representation are codes: the classical painter suppresses nonnaturalistic marks and colors so as to simulate (a staged) reality; the expressionist “frees” such marks and colors of naturalism so as to simulate direct expression” (Ibid. P61).
In context, Foster’s essay, like Diederichsen’s was concerned with the commodification of form. There was an unprecedented boom in the art market, in which expressionist paintings drew obscene commercial returns. The scepticism of practice one might arrive at from the situation is a suspicion that the practice ceases to be authentic and generative if (in whatever it is exploring) if it is created as a reiteration of a predetermined meaning.
However, a view that focusses on historical canonisation (that relies on somewhat arbitrary or framework-specific establishments of meaning) of artistic gestures, could be seen as a stingy and obtuse way to dismiss the potential for nuances within gestural form to generate surprise and lucidity.
In discussing a notion of utopia as embodied within a creative moment that is free from systems of exchange, Diedrich Diederichsen addresses an assumption about ‘nature’ that has been confused with a sense of autonomy. An instance that springs to mind is that of abstract expressionist painting. Despite expressing a scepticism that arises against practices that claim to operate within ‘original states’ (and without explicitly differentiating) Diederichsen none-the-less suggests that music might offer access to a state of utopian autonomy,
“such a utopia of music possesses a radicalism that the other ideal functions of the arts do not. While other arts formulate maximums or optimums, it is always in relation to emerging or established social rules, and not as the suspension of those rules – which would be genuinely utopian.”
Hal Foster’s 1983 essay ‘The Expressive Fallacy’ uses a structuralist framework to argue for the impossibility of generating form outside of inherited cultural codes. He identifies an established account of expressionist gesture “we commonly say that an expressionist like Kandinsky “broke through” representation, when in fact he replaced (or superimposed) one form with another.” (Foster, Hal “The Expressive Fallacy” Recodings. Bay Press: Washington. 1985 P60. –Essay first published in Art in America. January 1983)
And returns to an analysis of how the forms in the work signify their autonomy from conventional representational convention to point out the irony of its status as such “Both types of representation are codes: the classical painter suppresses nonnaturalistic marks and colors so as to simulate (a staged) reality; the expressionist “frees” such marks and colors of naturalism so as to simulate direct expression” (Ibid. P61).
In context, Foster’s essay, like Diederichsen’s was concerned with the commodification of form. There was an unprecedented boom in the art market, in which expressionist paintings drew obscene commercial returns. The scepticism of practice one might arrive at from the situation is a suspicion that the practice ceases to be authentic and generative if (in whatever it is exploring) if it is created as a reiteration of a predetermined meaning.
However, a view that focusses on historical canonisation (that relies on somewhat arbitrary or framework-specific establishments of meaning) of artistic gestures, could be seen as a stingy and obtuse way to dismiss the potential for nuances within gestural form to generate surprise and lucidity.
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